Guerrillas kill 6 Afghans

Taliban suspected in highway attack

September 02, 2003|By Liz Sly, Tribune foreign correspondent.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Suspected Taliban guerrillas killed at least six Afghans along the symbolically important Kabul-Kandahar road Monday, as the U.S. said it had dispatched extra troops to join the battle against hundreds of Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan.

Four Afghan security police died and four were wounded when their position guarding reconstruction workers along the road was attacked overnight, according to the governor of Zabul province, Hafizullah Khan.

The attack took place near the town of Shajoi in Zabul, about 180 miles southeast of Kabul and about 20 miles from the site of the latest battles involving U.S. and Taliban forces.

Two more Afghan security guards working for Louis Berger, the U.S. firm that is rebuilding the road, were killed nearby when their vehicle came under fire early Monday, the governor said.

The attacks come as a blow to U.S.-led efforts to speed reconstruction of the crucial highway linking the capital to the country's southeast, which has seen a resurgence of Taliban activity in recent weeks.

The road cuts through the Pashtun heartland from which the Taliban drew most of its support before the U.S.-led coalition ousted it from power. But years of civil war had turned what used to be an easy 6-hour drive into a 17-hour grind.

Work was suspended earlier this summer after a series of attacks on reconstruction workers, de-miners and aid workers. But amid realizations that further delays would damage the credibility of the international reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, as well as of the government of President Hamid Karzai, hundreds of Afghan security police and guards were posted along the road and work began again in earnest.

There was no word on whether Monday's attacks would prompt another suspension of the project.

The assaults came as a reminder that despite more than a week of fierce fighting in the northwest part of the province, Taliban guerrillas remain capable of preying on government and international targets far from their mountain hideouts.

The U.S. military announced that an unspecified number of ground troops had been sent to join the U.S. Special Forces and Afghan soldiers trying to dislodge Taliban fighters hiding in the region's mountains and caves.

The new assault, code-named Operation Mountain Viper, began Saturday and involves soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, said Col. Rodney Davis, a military spokesman.

All told, up to 1,000 Taliban fighters are believed to be hiding out in mountain ranges spanning the provinces of Zabul, Uruzgan and northern Kandahar, said provincial intelligence chief Khalil Hotak. That would be the largest concentration of Taliban fighters targeted since Operation Anaconda, the biggest U.S. assault of the Afghan war, 18 months ago.

The U.S. says it has killed at least 33 Taliban fighters in the past week. Four U.S. soldiers also have been killed in the battle to suppress what appears to be the biggest Taliban insurgency since the regime was ousted in December 2001.